Team:Cornell/policy
- WHAT WE DO
-
fishPHARM
- DRY LAB
- fishBit
- Heimdall Monitoring
- MODELING
- Math Modeling
- Animation
- DISCUSSION
- Policy and Practices
- Entrepreneurship
- Collaborations
- DEVELOPMENT
- Notebook
- Future Applications
- Safety
- OUTREACH
- OUR TEAM
Overview
fishPHARM first started as an iGEM summer project motivated, but has quickly evolved into a novel start-up company with potential for immediate application and long-term impact. We have engaged in several entrepreneurship endeavors to facilitate the growth of fishPHARM as not only a synthetic biology based project, but as a locally-based business venture capable of curing BCWD worldwide. We have also partnered with a variety of fish hatcheries and research institutes in the New York State Finger Lakes Region to help take our discoveries from the lab bench and meet the demands of a growing consumer market. Through conversations with these hatcheries, which deal with bacterial coldwater disease daily, we are able to analyze the safety implications of deploying our product in the fish farming industry and compare the economic costs of our product to current solutions. fishPHARM is designed directly with the needs of your everyday fish farmer in mind. By collaborating with our consumers in the initial stages, we aim to develop a product that is not only safe and effective, but also is practical for treating BCWD in the real-world.
Hatchery Collaborations
Economic Analysis
Oxytetracycline (branded as Terramycin) costs roughly $0.70/gram. Since the total amount of antibiotic required for a 10-day treatment is 25 g/100 lbs, treatment of a fish stock with Terramycin costs about $0.025 per dollar of fish [1]. However, Terramycin is already becoming obsolete as a treatment protocol due to the rapid formation of resistant strains [2]. While the antibiotic may appear cost effective, it cannot be relied upon as a long-term solution due to the rise of antibiotic resistance. Bacterial tolerance of chemotherapeutic agents could obligate fish farmers to use more potent antibiotics, which could have undesirable side effects on their stock. Furthermore, the evolutionary capability of Flavobacterium to overcome antibiotics suggests that reliance on such agents in the future is a questionable proposition.
The total production cost of a fishPHARM has been estimated to be roughly $2.00 per 20-pound fish. This translates to about $.14 per dollar of fish. While this may seem like a nontrivial amount, fishPHARM guarantees users a peace of mind that Terramycin simply cannot match. fishPHARM’S EcnB peptide is biodegradable as well as, and thus does not pose the same environmental and health risks that antibiotics do.
It is clear that the negative consequences of Flavobacterium psychrophilum infection are acute. As reported by the New York Department of Environmental Conservation, an epizootic of BCWD once infected 25% of lake trout raised in New York State hatchery raceways [4]. Given the inedibility of infected salmonids, the organism has the potential to reduce the financial yield of a salmon population from $7/lb to $4.90/lb in this scenario. Since roughly 2.4 million tons of salmon are produced by aquaculturists each year, even a small incidence of BCWD would have dire economic ramifications.